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Twenty years ago this journal published an article examining the disproportionate burden of global environmental changes on women and children, highlighting the inequalities in capabilities and opportunities for coping with risks. This retrospective re-examines selected global social and environmental transformations that have increased gendered vulnerability illustrating that over the past two decades, inequalities persist and in some instances have worsened. The social transformations underway—especially widening wealth gaps, large-scale population movements, gendered violence–exacerbate the environmental burdens on women and children even more. Changes in food security, water availability, and air quality continue to produce adverse effects on women and children reducing their ability to cope with everyday risk let alone respond and recover from disasters. Women and children continue to bear the brunt of adverse impacts of disasters and environmental change however we don't know the magnitude or geographic extent of the burden because there is no legacy of data reliability to consistently document these injustices. What gets measured gets done, but in the case of women and children they are often the undocumented victims further reproducing the notion of the forgotten casualties.

During the past decade, the number of earthquakes has increased dramatically in the state of Oklahoma, largely attributed to induced seismicity from wastewater injections (hydraulic fracturing). The increased seismic disaster risk in Oklahoma has captured public attention and necessitated actions by decision makers to mediate the consequences. Geospatial modeling to identify the populations exposed to higher levels of potential risk can help prioritize locations for mitigation actions based on the underlying social vulnerability of residents. In this paper, we explore a method for integrating the spatial distribution of seismic risk (hazard exposure) with social vulnerability (hazard impact). Loss scenarios, social vulnerability metrics, and potential physical damage are combined in a geographic information system to identify the spatial vulnerability of an exposed population to the increased seismic risk, and the locations for targeting mitigation actions — areas with the greatest exposure and vulnerability. The results of induced seismicity earthquake scenarios show disproportionately higher losses for places with more minority populations (primarily African-American) and more renters when compared to the non-induced scenarios, suggesting a potential environmental justice concern.

This paper traces the development of peer-reviewed, integrated research on disaster risk over the past fifteen years to assess the current state of knowledge. We define integrated research as those studies that engage multiple scales, stakeholders, knowledge (scientific to indigenous), disciplines, and methods. Using 39 peer-reviewed academic English-language journals as the basis of our analysis, we conducted both a content analysis and a bibliometric analysis on the characteristics of the research: disciplinarity, knowledge, place and scale, stakeholder involvement, and policy applications as well as the integration across these traits. While integrated disaster risk research has made great strides over the past 15 years, much of it is still discipline or multi-discipline centric and largely produced by North American and European scholars. The co-production of knowledge is limited and implementation gaps between research and practice persist.

There is increasing policy and research interest in disaster resilience, yet the extant literature is still mired in definitional debates, epistemological orientations of researchers, and differences in basic approaches to measurement. As a consequence, there is little integration across domains and disciplines on community resilience assessment, its driving forces, and geographic variability. Using US counties as the study unit, this paper creates an empirically-based resilience metric called the Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC) that is both conceptually and theoretically sound, yet, easy enough to compute for use in a policy context. A common set of variables were used to measure the inherent resilience of counties in the United States according to six different domains or capitals as identified in the extant literature – social, economic, housing and infrastructure, institutional, community, and environmental. Data were from public and freely accessible data sources. Counties in the US Midwest and Great Plains states have the most inherent resilience, while counties in the west, along the US-Mexico border, and along the Appalachian ridge in the east contain the least resilience. Further, it was found that inherent resilience is not the opposite of social vulnerability, but a distinctly different construct both conceptually and empirically. While understanding the overall variability in resilience, the BRIC is easily deconstructed to its component parts to provide guidance to policy makers on where investments in intervention strategies may make a difference in the improvement of scores. Such evidence-based research has an opportunity to influence public policy focused on disaster risk.

There are many index-based approaches for assessing vulnerability to socio-natural hazards with differences in underlying theory, indicator selection and aggregation methodology. Spatially explicit output scores depend on these characteristics and contrasting approaches can therefore lead to very different policy implications. These discrepancies call for more critical reflection on index design and utility, a discussion that has not kept pace with the impetus for vulnerability assessments and respective index creation and application following the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015. Comparing index outputs is an effective approach in this regard. Here, the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI®) and the vulnerability component of the Global Delta Risk Index (GDRI) are applied at census tract level in the Mississippi Delta and visually and quantitatively compared. While the SoVI® is grounded in the hazard/risk research paradigm with primarily socio-economic indicators and an inductive principal component methodology, the GDRI incorporates advancements from sustainability science with ecosystem-based indicators and a modular hierarchical design. Maps, class rank changes, and correlations are used to assess the convergence and divergence of these indexes across the delta. Results show that while very different theoretical frameworks influence scores through indicator selection, methodology of index calculation has an even greater effect on output. Within aggregative methodology, the treatment of inter-indicator correlation is decisive. Implications include the need for an increased focus on index methodology and validation of results, transparency, and critical reflection regarding assessment limitations, as our results imply that contradictory risk reduction policies could be considered depending on the assessment methodology used.

Local and regional hazard management initiatives undertake loss and impact studies to prioritize funds for future mitigation programs. However, hazard loss records typically include only direct damages to property and crops. More flexible measures of hazard losses and impacts are needed to allow comparisons across local places and different time frames, as one mechanism for prioritizing disaster aid and mitigation resources. This study introduces a relative loss ratio at the county level for the US. All losses from geophysical, meteorological, and hydrologic hazards are collected for the period 1980–2009. The loss data are normalized by a measure of economic capacity calculated using county and state employment data and state Gross Domestic Product estimates. A statistical regionalization technique is utilized to identify hazard regions of the US which consistently suffered heavy losses in comparison to their economic capacities. For the nation, the average relative loss ratio is 0.15% of the US GDP, suggesting that overall relative impact of disasters has not been that large. However, downscaling to regional or county levels shows a different result with the relative impact exceeding 10% of county GDP for many places, and more than 3% of regional GDP in the central US and the Gulf Coast. While the national capacity to absorb and recover from disasters is quite high, local capacities are often exceeded by singular large events or the cumulative impacts of smaller events, necessitating the influx of external aid to help these places recover from hazards.

There is considerable research interest on the meaning and measurement of resilience from a variety of research perspectives including those from the hazards/disasters and global change communities. The identification of standards and metrics for measuring disaster resilience is one of the challenges faced by local, state, and federal agencies, especially in the United States. This paper provides a new framework, the disaster resilience of place (DROP) model, designed to improve comparative assessments of disaster resilience at the local or community level. A candidate set of variables for implementing the model are also presented as a first step towards its implementation.

(1999). Reframing disaster policy: the global evolution of vulnerable communities. Global Environmental Change Part B: Environmental Hazards: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 39-44.

(2001). The secret history of natural disaster. Global Environmental Change Part B: Environmental Hazards: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 29-29.

The current level of emergency preparedness and planning for off-site releases of radioactivity from nuclear power plants in the United States and public reactions to it are reviewed. The major assumptions in these plans involving the responses of the public are highlighted and provide the context for a critique of such plans. Five major deficiencies in the planning efforts are discussed in detail. As currently developed, emergency response plans are far short of insuring maximum protection of the public health and safety of residents living around these facilities. More importantly, the plans simply may not work if implemented.

This paper examines whether the nuclear freeze concept has become part of the American political agenda. Through a cartographic and statistical analysis, voters' support for and opposition to the nuclear freeze is examined. Using data from the nuclear freeze referenda in New Jersey (1982) and South Dakota (1984) the correlates of freeze support are used to explain the extent to which the topic has become a major policy issue. Our results clearly show that intense politicization of the nuclear freeze issue has occurred in contemporary American politics. In both states, support for the nuclear freeze strongly correlates with votes for partisan political candidates. Thus, control of the issue has passed out of the hands of grass-roots activists and individual voters to become part of the American political agenda of partisan politics.